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Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Oh no, the nanny state brigade is at it again. In their certainty they know what's best for us, they're back with their social engineering, wanting to punish us for being fat and use a tax on sugary drinks to push us towards "healthier choices".

On Wednesday the Grattan Institute will release a report urging the federal government to impose an excise of 40¢ per 100 grams of sugar on non-alcoholic beverages that contain added sugar.

What part of personal freedom don't they understand? If people want to drink sugary drinks, why should anyone else try to stop them? What harm are they doing to others?

Surely this is a matter of personal choice and responsibility. If being fat is bad for the health, it's up to the individual to accept responsibility for their own fate and decide to eat less and exercise more.

How much of our lives is the government going to take over? What willpower will be left if they keep doing more of this stuff?

Actually, I'm never convinced by these arguments from the professed defenders of our personal liberty.

Whenever I hear people banging on about "the nanny state" I wonder about their motives. Many of the critics are trying to keep government small so they're required to pay less tax.

These souls are often full of their own virtue. They attribute their comfortable circumstances entirely to their own efforts (forgetting the outside help they invariably had) and can't see why they should help others who aren't as disciplined as they are.

As for the libertarian think tanks leading the charge against the nanny state, you wonder how many of their undisclosed (but tax deductible) donations come from alcohol, tobacco and food companies anxious to resist any government measure limiting their freedom to profit from unhealthy products.

As the Grattan report – written by Hal Swerissen and Professor Stephen Duckett, a leading health economist – reminds us, there's little doubt that excessive overweight increases the risk of premature death, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Yet the incidence of obesity – a body mass index of more than 30 – is growing in the rich countries. The proportion of obese Australian adults is 28 per cent, up from less than 10 per cent in the 1980s. That's not counting the further 36 per cent who are overweight.

About 7 per cent of Australian children are obese, up from a negligible number in the '80s.

Although it may have plateaued among children, obesity continues to worsen among adults and seems likely to increase further.

Research suggests the main cause is overeating of processed food laced with sugar, fat and salt, which grows ever cheaper and available. The amount of exercise we get hasn't changed much over that time.

Health authorities and governments have been worried about an "obesity epidemic" for years, but nothing they've done so far seems to have worked.

This is probably because they've been tiptoeing around the powerful commercial food interests, focusing on individual responsibility, physical exercise and voluntary food labelling.

I agree it's time we did something more assertive and, though a tax on sugary drinks is far from a cure-all, it's a good place to start.

Lots of other countries are doing it, and have shown it works in discouraging consumption of sugary drinks and reducing obesity somewhat.

For us to impose it as a federal excise would be simple and administratively cheap. We already have excises intended to discourage us from smoking and overconsuming alcoholic beverages.

It would be paid by manufacturers and importers, then passed on to consumers, which would encourage people to move to bottled water, artificially sweetened drinks or even tap water.

A principle of libertarianism is that you should be allowed to do as you please as long as you're not harming others.

But as well as harming themselves, the obese also harm the rest of us. Evidence shows that, relative to others, the obese make more use of doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical benefits.

All these impose higher costs on other taxpayers. Obese people are more likely to be on welfare benefits and less likely to be employed and paying income tax, which imposes further cost on other taxpayers.

Grattan estimates the cost to the rest of us is about $5 billion a year. The sugary drinks tax would recoup about $500 million a year of that.

Libertarianism assumes no one could possibly know our best interests better than ourselves. That's because we are unfailingly rational in the decisions we make. We have an iron will which stops us doing anything we later come to regret or being influenced by the behaviour of those around us.

In reality, all of us have a problem with self-control in at least one area of our lives and probably several.

And here's the bit nanny's critics never get: most of us are pleased when governments help us with our self-control problem by taking temptation out of our way.

Governments have used compulsory seat belts and random breath testing to reduce road deaths per head of population by more than 80 per cent. They've used sky high tobacco tax, bans on indoor smoking and other things to cut the rate of smoking by more than half.

It's high time they stood up to the processed food industry and did something effective about obesity.